Mascot apologizes for mocking prayer
We read:
"The University of Minnesota is apologizing after its Goldy Gopher mascot poked fun at a Penn State football player who was praying before last week's game.
A video made before Saturday's game at State College shows Penn State defensive end Jerome Hayes kneeling in prayer in the end zone. Goldy Gopher kneels in front of Hayes, according to the video posted on YouTube. When Hayes stands up, so does Goldy. The mascot tries to make some contact, but Hayes ignores him and trots back to the bench.
Minnesota spokesman Dan Wolter says the stunt was "plainly a mistake" and the mascot didn't intend to offend anyone or trivialize religion.
Source
An apology to a Christian! Maybe they thought the player was a Muslim.
25 comments:
hxxp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=admY-bNWo5U
I think they are really upset because the mascot seems to be endorsing religion - the rest is just a smoke screen.
As a Christian, I have a problem with players praying on the football field. Why don't they say their prayers before the game in the locker room? Jesus taught to pray to God in private, not to pray on street corners to be seen by men. The purpose of these public displays is to draw attention to the prayer, not to commune with God.
It was rude and asinine. Good for Minnesota. They should demote the guy in the suit, put him on the JV gopher squad or something. '
THis isn't an issue of free speech, but of politeness and courtesy. As for whether a Christian should pray publicly or not, you often see batters or free-throw shooters cross themselves, but hardly ever see an individual football player do so (he did cross himself, btw).
Selfish to pray for benefit in so trivial a thing as a game with so much else going on in the world - but who knows what "god" is being prayed to and for what!
Anonymous 4:03 - God's rewards are for anything, no matter how trivial or how huge.
"God's rewards are for anything"
Even for murder? You said "anything".
Yes, there is an appropriate reward for murder. Though I wouldn't describe that "reward" as a positive thing.
BTW, while these players are in public, their prayers are still private. Take a look a Daniel sometime.
Whether they're doing it just for show (the Bible's standard) is known only to them and God. It's not like they can run back to the locker room after a touchdown.
Not worth commenting on.
"Man must learn to rely upon himself. Reading bibles will not protect him from the blasts of winter, but houses, fires. and clothing will. To prevent famine, one plow is worth a million sermons, and even patent medicines will cure more diseases than all the prayers uttered since the beginning of the world."
Robert Green Ingersoll, “The Gods” (1872)
Who's to say the player was praying for "a benefit in so trivial a thing as a game with so much else going on in this world"? That sounds like the Pharisee thanking God he isn't like those other folks.
Perhaps the player was *offering* something to God, such as his good performance and dedicated sportsmanship? Perhaps he was asking for protection against harm? I've heard my share of prayers to a team before a game, and never heard anyone ask God to help the team beat the opponent, but to play honorably and be protected for injury
Mr. Clean,
The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success
Description:
"Many books have been written about the success of the West, analyzing why Europe was able to pull ahead of the rest of the world by the end of the Middle Ages. The most common explanations cite the West’s superior geography, commerce, and technology. Completely overlooked is the fact that faith in reason, rooted in Christianity’s commitment to rational theology, made all these developments possible. Simply put, the conventional wisdom that Western success depended upon overcoming religious barriers to progress is utter nonsense.
In The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark advances a revolutionary, controversial, and long overdue idea: that Christianity and its related institutions are, in fact, directly responsible for the most significant intellectual, political, scientific, and economic breakthroughs of the past millennium.
In Stark’s view, what has propelled the West is not the tension between secular and nonsecular society, nor the pitting of science and the humanities against religious belief. Christian theology, Stark asserts, is the very font of reason: While the world’s other great belief systems emphasized mystery, obedience, or introspection, Christianity alone embraced logic and reason as the path toward enlightenment, freedom, and progress. That is what made all the difference.
In explaining the West’s dominance, Stark convincingly debunks long-accepted “truths.” For instance, by contending that capitalism thrived centuries before there was a Protestant work ethic–or even Protestants–he counters the notion that the Protestant work ethic was responsible for kicking capitalism into overdrive. In the fifth century, Stark notes, Saint Augustine celebrated theological and material progress and the institution of “exuberant invention.” By contrast, long before Augustine, Aristotle had condemned commercial trade as “inconsistent with human virtue”–which helps further underscore that Augustine’s times were not the Dark Ages but the incubator for the West’s future glories.
This is a sweeping, multifaceted survey that takes readers from the Old World to the New, from the past to the present, overturning along the way not only centuries of prejudiced scholarship but the antireligious bias of our own time. The Victory of Reason proves that what we most admire about our world–scientific progress, democratic rule, free commerce–is largely due to Christianity, through which we are all inheritors of this grand tradition."
Mr. Luke,
From http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/12/what_do_you_imagine_rick_warre.php , post #559
Here's another review - from a sociologist and not on Amazon: "The Victory of Reason is the worst book by a social scientist that I have ever read. Stark's methodology has nothing to do with history, or the logic of comparative analysis, or the rigorous testing of hypotheses. Instead he simply makes claims, the more outrageous the better, and dismisses all evidence that runs contrary to his claims as unimportant, and treats anyone with a point of view different from his own as stupid and contemptible, and reduces causation in human affairs to one thing and one thing only. How in the world, I kept asking myself as I read this book, could someone spend so much of his life trying to understand something as important as religion and come away so childish?"
Here, just for laughs, Rodney Stark's opinion of evolution:
...the boundaries between species are distinct and firm - one species does not simply trail off into another by degrees
...why not lift the requirement that high school texts enshrine Darwin's failed attempt as eternal truth?
I don't know if Stark is full of shit about the history of Christianity but let's just say that my Bayesian prior for it is pretty high at this point. Do you really want us to suffer through 235 pages of Stark? Isn't there anyone else you can recommend?
review link:
http://www.powells.com/review/2006_02_02.html
evolution link: http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ideas/050210darwin.html
The links seemed to have been truncated. Here they are again, but slit onto two lines. Sorry about that.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/
12/what_do_you_imagine_rick_warre.php
http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ideas/
050210darwin.html
"The attempt to show that there is no philosophical knowledge by simply urging that there is always someone who can be relied on to remain unconvinced is a common fallacy made even by a distinguished philosopher like Bertrand Russell. I called it the But-there-is-always-someone-who-will-never-agree Diversion. Then there is the charge that in philosophy it is never possible to prove to someone that you are right and he or she is wrong. But the missing piece in this argument is the distinction between producing a proof and persuading a person. A person can be persuaded by an abominable argument and remain unconvinced by one that ought to be accepted."
— Antony Flew
In other words, someone refusing to be convinced does not invalidate a valid argument.
Well I guees that works all ways and serves no useful purpose!
Luke provided a book review lifted from Amazon.
Mr. Clean provided a book review lifted from Powells.
So, what's the problem here? Only Amazon reviews are valid?
It seems that Luke is an obnoxious blowhard.
No, it wasn't a review. It was the description from the back of the book. In other words, it was a summary.
The book itself is the argument.
It is quite telling that Luke only refuted the review vs summary nit.
He didn't refute the "obnoxious blowhard" statement.
If the premises are proved false, then so is the conclusion. That's logic 101.
You just proved my point, Mr. Blowhard.
Since when is it wrong to defend against attacks? Or is it only wrong when YOU are the attacker?
It has been well known for millennia that Ad Hominem attacks are a logical fallacy that do nothing to prove a point.
You again proved my point, Mr. Blowhard.
Keep it coming Mr. Clean. (NOT!)
All you manage to do with each post is to continue to prove to the world that you don't have any facts to back up your claims, leaving you with the last resort of the desperate: name calling.
I'm actually enjoying watching you drive your credibility into the ground.
The ONLY claim Mr. Clean has made is that you are an obnoxious blowhard. Deal with it.
A) What does that mean?
B) Without an logical and evidential foundation, it's just a Proof By Assertion Fallacy.
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